1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to computerized telecommunications, and more particularly, to automated addressing of distributions, such as E-mail messages, phone calls, paging, faxing, printing, letter writing, or the like.
2. Related Art
Many E-mail systems provide convenient methods for addressing mail to users of the E-mail system. For example, several commercially available software products include a personal and/or enterprise address book for convenient searching of mail addresses (an enterprise being a business, group of businesses, or simply a collection of people). Further provided is convenient placement of the mail addresses in the E-mail address field with a simple point and click of the mouse. Many E-mail systems also provide methods for automatic addressing according to addresses on a previously distributed E-mail item. The system will automatically set recipient addresses in response to particular user actions such as forwarding, resending or answering a E-mail distribution. Automatic addressing is very useful.
A person often uses an E-mail system to send mail to people on matters associated with phone calls, voice mail, fax (facsimile) jobs, print jobs, or being paged. There is no method for automatically completing recipient address information according to previous distributions that may be related to a subsequently distributed E-mail item. For example, consider a person who is traveling, is paged, and responds to the page to discover an emergency business situation. Upon handling the emergency situation, the person wants to send an E-mail item to the person whom initiated the page in order to summarize the situation.
It is desirable to have a method that allows the person to send E-mail that automatically sets the recipient address field according to the person who last paged. Thus, a method is needed for automatic completion of E-mail recipient address information when an E-mail item is related to previous distributions.